The Space and the Sea
I never feel more insignificant than when I am on the beach.
Over the course of my lifetime, I have walked or driven the entire length of Delaware from the opening of the Delaware Bay down to Ocean City, Maryland. Collecting seashells with my grandma, spending alone time with my first boyfriend the time I brought him on a family vacation, walking the boardwalk with my friends after we graduated high school, throwing a football back and forth with my brother, trying to find an open spot in the sand to watch fireworks. Nearly 30 miles of beaches that I have traversed over my 24 years of annual beach trips.
On one of the many folded road maps my grandma kept in her glove compartment to navigate before the advent of GPS, I could put my finger on the exact points that I have stood, on the edge of a continent, by tracing the Delaware coastline starting at Cape Henlopen all the way down to Bethany Beach. Despite covering all that ground throughout my life, I am but a dot on that map.
If I were to travel thirty miles out from the shore, I would only be one hundredth of the way to Spain traveling due East. Standing on the very edge of the North American continent, looking out towards the ocean, I am small. I am nothing but a speck of sand in the cosmic universe of space. The ocean stretches ahead and it’s all I can see, the curvature of the earth hiding the rest of the world from me.
My grandma taught me how to time a wave. For the small ones, I push off the sand bank beneath my toes and jump, letting the power of the water lift me up as it passes beneath me. If the wave is too big, curling with white foam before it reaches me, I go low, flattening my body and diving beneath the wave. I bring my head up straight once I feel the rush of the water roll off my back. When the waves are calm, I lay on my back and feel the water bobbing as I rise and fall with it.
Floating in the ocean, I am apart from the world. I exist in my own little nebulous of space. The only sound I can hear is the gentle movement of the ocean- the giggling children, lifeguard’s whistles, squawking of gulls- none of that exists while I float. With my eyes closed I could be on another planet or floating through the atmosphere of this one. I try not to let my mind wonder about the vastness that lives beneath my suspended body- crabs, coquinas, jellyfish all meander through the waters closest to shore, but not far away, fish of all kinds, sharks, and dolphins live. Even further out and miles below, creatures that have never seen the light of sun and dwell.
Back home, away from the continental shore, there is no space. No space in my mind for quiet. No space in the day to achieve my goals. I am part of a machine that is constantly churning. In the everyday, I can’t stop. If I rest, I’m not good enough, not working hard enough, simply not doing enough. On the ocean’s edge however, I am reminded. Reminded that I am but a grain of sand walking on a pebble with finite time floating through an infinite universe of space.
